SAN MARCOS  A husband-and-wife team from a North County farm that helps veterans and two former local college students were among a small group of people who joined first lady Michelle Obama’s fifth annual White House Kitchen Garden Project this month.

The students — Eric Boyd, a former Army sergeant and Iraq combat veteran, and Mike Hanes, a former Force Recon Marine and Iraq combat veteran — are graduates of a program called Veterans Sustainable Agriculture Training that’s offered through Cal State San Marcos. The six-week, 270-hour course trains transitioning servicemen and women in the sustainable organic agriculture industry.

The program was started in 2007 by Marine veteran Colin Archipley and his wife, Karen, on their Archi’s Acres farm in the hills above Escondido.

“It was really amazing,” said Karen Archipley. “Michelle came out and she walked straight over to us, gave each one of us a big hug and thanked us for the work that we were doing.”

Boyd said they didn’t have a lot of time with Obama, but “every moment that she was talking to us, she was very warm, very welcoming, and really enthusiastic about what we were doing.”

The event was also attended by about 30 schoolchildren from Vermont, Tennessee, Massachusetts, Florida, and Washington, D.C.

Obama planted a vegetable garden on the South Lawn to start a national conversation on the health and well-being of the country. It eventually evolved into her Let’s Move! initiative to help solve the problem of childhood obesity.

Participating schools have made improvements to school lunches through the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act. The bill, signed into law in 2010, funds child nutrition programs and free lunch programs in schools until 2015.

Boyd said the planting event was “fairly intimate, except for all the press surrounding it.”

Before the event, he said, the group toured some of the lower part of the White House, including the library, sitting rooms and the Jackie Kennedy room.

“They were pretty laid-back about it. There was always someone in the rooms with us, but they kind of let us wander the lower level,” Boyd said.

Archipley said it was her third time at the White House in three years. She and her husband have been working alongside President Barack Obama’s rural adviser, talking about the issues troops face as they get out.

Their visit to the White House on April 4 was part of a busy weeklong trip advocating for transitioning military. The Archipleys, Boyd and Hanes bunked at the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Va., during their stay.

Archipley said Michelle Obama invited them to the planting to recognize the veterans who choose organic sustainable agriculture as a career.

Archipley said agriculture is a good fit for transitioning military, because almost half of servicemen and women come from rural backgrounds.

“When they transition out, a lot of them want to return back to their roots, but they don’t want to do it the old way where it’s like mono-farming, and you can’t afford to feed yourself. They want to do it in a way where it’s sustainable, and it makes a good living,” Archipley said.

The Veterans Sustainable Agriculture Training program started at MiraCosta College in Oceanside, and is now offered at Cal State San Marcos and the university’s campus in Temecula. It’s about to branch out to Cal State San Bernardino, Archipley said.

Boyd graduated last July from the program at CSUSM and recently built a 4,300-square-foot greenhouse on his family’s organic farm in San Luis Obispo. His first crop, a diverse mix of Asian greens and lettuce varieties, is coming in now.

Hanes graduated from the MiraCosta VSAT program in 2011. He has since created Dang! hot sauce, an all-raw “superfood” sauce, sold at Whole Foods in Encinitas, La Jolla and Hillcrest.